We've been running the hardware configuration testing as you know. We had some issues with our patching system which we've dealt with and now everything is running smoothly. We're patching several times a day and testing various hardware configurations.
There's no playtesting , just some professional testing on the actual servers getting things ready for the rest of us. As you can probably understand we're running full steam with everything and time is very limited but we'll keep you in the loop with these short progress updates.
Here's a real shocker. A darkfall update that doesn't update anything. "Oh yeah, we're super fucking busy. We've been busy for the last 8 years, but hey... Maybe a beta? Eventually?"
I am really disappointed with the gameplay video. I've never put a ton of value on graphics when they bog down a game's performance, but I also appreciate a well developed world in an MMO. If we're not going to have life or status bars on top of things we can attack, then it just makes sense that there would be some sort of visual indicator to identify how damaged our enemy is. That's why health bars were added to games in the first place -- to make up for the fact that our technology wouldn't support wasting resources to render secondary shit like that. But as many new games have demonstrated, our computers can handle it.
Now, if we're talking about a battle that has hundreds or thousands of people engaged, the extra resources it would take to render a crumbling wall or hacked up bodies would probably bring the game to a halt, but let's be realistic. Aventurine doesn't have the marketing capability, fan base, or even the general internet buzz necessary for the game to become ridiculously successful like World of Warcraft. And their "anything goes" philosophy, while it sounds extremely appealing to people like us, will really alienate a massive amount of gamers that like the structure and repetition involved with other MMOs. This game will be moderately populated at best, so the very idea that there are any long-term expectations of massively-epic battles is just wishful thinking.
Having a wall of a fortification go from pristine to instantly disappeared as the people on top of it gracefully float to the ground isn't acceptable in an MMO in 2008 (probably 2009 in darkfall's case). The intro to game programming course at my alma matter produced better looking results than that, and most of those students were borderline retards. If "Myth" could imitate something that looked kind of like realistic physics in 1997, any serious game venture should be able to do the same more than a decade later.
I haven't given up hope, but if the game is released in the condition in that video, it will lose a previously fervent supporter in me.